Dear Members and Friends of the ELS: This year marks the 490th anniversary of the Augsburg Confession. For Lutherans this defining confession of faith is best known for its clear description on the doctrine of justification by grace through faith in Christ as set forth in its Article IV. However, another key section of the […]

Dear Members and Friends of the ELS: How to cope with adversity? For the Christian, the answer is looking more and more to the One who in His providence permits hardship to serve the overall benefit of His kingdom work. Someone asked a believer in Christ, “How can it be that you handle affliction so […]

Dear Members and Friends of the ELS: The excellent pictorial history of our ELS, Proclaim His Wonders (by Rev. C. Ferkenstad, 2017), contains an interesting little piece of information. Before our Bethany Lutheran College was purchased by the synod in 1927 for the price of $90,000, the school was known as Bethany Ladies’ College. The […]

Dear Members and Friends of the ELS: Our synod’s hymnbook, the Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary (ELH, 1996), contains many wonderful devotional prayers, touching on a wide variety of topics. There are day-by-day morning and evening prayers (pp. 167-171) and there are prayers that deal with disease and death (p. 172). One of the short prayers especially […]

Dear Members and Friends of the ELS: Among things we prayerfully appreciate in this church season are the Lenten hymns. These hymns are packed with prayerful meditation on the love of our Savior as he treads the road to Calvary for our salvation. Do we also realize that our Lord himself-together with his disciples-sang as […]